7 Card Stud Tournament Strategy

tips for seven card stud tournaments

December, 2016 - Playing in a Seven Card stud tournament is an excellent way to get a change of pace from the grind of ring game play and also and excellent way to take home a big chunk of change. There are a few important considerations however when going from the normal cash ring game into a multi player limit 7 Card Stud tournament. If you are unable to make the adaptations necessary, you will be doing nothing more than feeding money into the prize pool and busting out early! Read below for the top 7 Card Stud tournament strategy tips available online. It is very important that you fully understand the 7 Card Stud rules before you get in to advanced Stud poker strategy articles like that.

One of the most important considerations early on in a 7card stud tournament is how your opponents play. Because of the wide variety of cards dealt in a Seven Card stud game (and the resulting wide range of hands that might show up) many different playing styles develop. There are players who are severely tight and play very few hands and there are maniacs who seem to play everything. It will be important for you to identify the kinds of players at your initial table because they will have an influence on your initial strategy. At the beginning you will want to play in the best strategy that the situation warrants. You have to realize that early in the tournament you have a fairly healthy amount of chips compared to the current antes, so its okay to take some risks and lose a few pots. Generally speaking, we don’t preach a “tight is right” approach to the early stages of Seven Card stud tournaments. Rather we feel the best strategy is one that grows your stack and exploits noticed opponent weaknesses in the early rounds.

If you find yourself playing against other players such as yourself or ones who might even be more aggressive and trying to build their stack at a greater rate, you will need to adjust accordingly in order to neutralize that player. In situations like this, it is best for you to play quite aggressive. Bet and raise to convince other straggling players to fold and then get your opponent heads up. A few well placed wins over this opponent will have him or her thinking twice about being so aggressive next time they have to take you on. Anytime you can get a player to think twice about you or maybe even fear you in a tournament you have gained exponentially.

As a tournament continues into the middle and later round you will have to drastically change your strategy for a number of reasons. One is that the antes will start to get very high and any time you enter a pot you will be committing a fair number of your chips. The second reason is that since usually good players make it to the middle and late rounds of the tournament, you will need to adjust even more to be able to keep up with the competition.

In the middle and late rounds you should begin bluffing much more frequently. If you find yourself at a new table, a grand entrance is usually the best way to go about things. Let your opponents know that you mean business, but watch out for players with significantly more chips that you. Because of the expensive nature of entering a pot in the final rounds, sometimes it is best to come out betting and raising early on to just take the antes and any other initial bets right away. This is a great strategy to help keep your chip stack on par with the quickly escalating antes. Here is a list of the best Stud poker sites for tournament players. You won't find better places to play Stud online in 2016. Pokerstars hosts more Stud tournaments than all four of the other rooms combined so I suggest playing there if you are able.